Sometimes, in the scientific world, things are discovered accidentally and unexpectedly,
by stumbling over them. Other times, according to Brian Greene, of Science magazine, regarding seemingly bizarre situations, "before
something can be discovered, it first has to be imagined." In other words, have an idea that something exists, search for it, and
someday you might find it.
Peter Higgs had such an idea, and he found it. His idea was
that he felt the contents of the air around us had an influence on everything we observe, and that all of space is uniformly filled
with some substance that slows down things moving through it, and changes our perspective of them. To illustrate what he means, a
ping pong ball, immersed in water, and pushed, will seem more massive than it really is, and will move slower than when the same force
is applied to it out of water. The water environment influences the observing of pushing the ping pong ball and how it reacts to the
push. Higgs felt that way about the space around us, believing that something in that space affected our perspective of everything
any of our senses were aware of. Higgs wanted to find out what that something was, and what it's characteristics were. Things pass
through that something: light, electricity, sound, and all sorts of beams and rays. therefore there can't be "nothing" in the space
surrounding everything. Something has to support the weight of the things passing through the space. Higgs wanted to find out what
it was.

To look for this invisible "pea soup", as it were, a 17 mile-long circular tunnel
was constructed, costing some $10 billion. Inside the tunnel, subatomic particles called protons speed along, coming from opposite
directions, at nearly 180,000 miles per second. These particles pass through the 17 miles 11,000 times in just one second. To help
maintain these speeds, 9000 magnets are wrapped around the tunnel to help keep the particles moving along. Needless to say, these
particles smash into each other. The collisions of the particles, and the resulting "sparks," were shown to emit what was determined
to be a little piece of the substance Higgs was looking for. The little piece was named a Higgs boson, and the something in space
that affected our perspective of the things passing through it, was dubbed the Higgs field. Peter Higgs feels his dream has come true.

Could this boson be made of an impenetrable substance, one that can not be broken down
into smaller parts, as atoms were once thought of, or will it lead to yet other unseen particles, and possibly a new form of matter?
Scientists project that the Higgs field discovery might result in revealing a spatial dimension besides the length, width, and depth
that we are all familiar with. The potential theories that will no doubt evolve from Higgs' discovery will be monumental, if they
are substantiated.
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The coldest spot in the universe is not in outer space, as we might imagine, but in Burnaby, a small town east of Vancouver, British
Columbia, in Canada. And it's in a secured black box just 10 ft. tall. The cylindrical cooling apparatus inside that box maintains
a temperature of minus 459.6 degrees. Everything in the universe is moving, relative to everything else, but at that temperature almost
all movement affected by it stops. In addition to the black box, a computer firm in Burnaby, called D-Wave, makes the D-Wave Two,
a computer that has the potential of solving problems that would take conventional computers centuries. The cost is $10 million each,
and they are called quantum computers. The company is backed by Amazon, Google, and an investment arm of the CIA. Purchasers of the
D-Wave II include Lockheed Aircraft, NASA, and a buyer D-Wave will not identify. IBM and Microsoft also have their own groups exploring
the possibilities of quantum computers.
Quantum computers are based on the findings of
quantum physicists, who describe the behavior of photons, which are light waves, and electrons, which are particles contained inside
the atom, called subatomic particles. Computers use these particles to do their computing. Quantum physicists have conducted experiments
where these subatomic particles can be shown to have the capacity to be in more than one place at the same time and doing more that
one thing at the same time in these places. (That's what they say. How can this be? No one knows.) The quantum computer makes use
of this capacity by allowing the working parts of the computer to solve more than one problem at a time in more than one place at
a time. Thus they are very, yes very fast. The computers have to be isolated in an environment where there is no vibration, no electromagnetism
and no heat. Currently, the construction and working with the computers is in the beginning stages. In fact, some feel there is not
enough skill or knowledge yet to know completely what problems the computers will someday be able to solve. Some scientists working
on the project aren't even sure how it will be used and see the computers as solutions looking for the right problems, as they are
so filled with high expectations, but not so much needed understanding yet. If this project is successful, today's computers will
seem like store clerks working with an abacus, trying to find the total bill for a shopper. Maybe a quantum computer will someday
help Peter Higgs investigate the Higgs field, saving a lot of time and calculations in that effort.